Archive for January, 2004

In America Chief Justice Marshall, following Blackstone and Coke, first breathed life into the corporation in 1819, writing in the Dartmouth College case, which is widely quoted in judicial opinions to this day: “a corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” Marshall’s dictum appeals to leftist critics for […]

Dave Barry, Jim Treacher, Ken Goldstein, and James Lileks are sometimes funny. This, for instance, is funny. Several other bloggers have been funny once or twice. On to business. The droll Frank J puts me in mind of Max Beerbohm, except that Max won the prize for Latin verse at Oxford, distinguished himself as a […]

Is it possible to review books and movies without resorting to the following? It’s a true story. I’ll spare you Oscar Wilde on life imitating art, because I suspect a large percentage of Oscar’s epigrams came from scouring the papers for journalese that he could stand on its head. Invert a cliché, produce a witticism. […]

Michael Blowhard hypothesizes two concert attendees, one of a Black Sabbath show (Oz-era, one hopes), the other of Pollini playing Chopin. They both report that the show was “great,” and Michael has a few questions, which I will number for convenience: 1. Knowing nothing else about these two people, would you feel capable of saying […]

Several bloggers are reading my homeboy, the late American poet and critic Yvor Winters, which pleases me greatly, and misreading him, which comes with the territory. I first encountered Winters’ name in the back pages of The New Republic, where the reviewer, discussing someone else, referred to him slightingly as “opposed to everything the 20th […]

David Fiore is back for a third helping (or fourth or fifth, I’ve lost count by now). His erudite reply to my Professor X piece investigates various ancillary points of Emerson scholarship, like his relationship to Coleridge and the important question of whether the notorious transparent eyeball can see itself. David is terrifyingly well-informed on […]

It turns out that my laws of blog comments were incomplete. I forgot this: 7. Anyone who posts to a dead thread is insane. To take a few recent instances: Here, on a casual aside about Bill Buckley and joint sizes: you are all stupied you have no clue about the weed world its alot […]

After sixteen months, and a few late fits and starts, Cinderella Bloggerfeller has finally decided to hang up his glass slipper. Don’t go over there and encourage him to come back. I used to do that when my favorite bloggers retired until I realized how tiresome it is. There are other joys in life, and […]

Sixty years ago Yvor Winters wrote a moving essay on Hart Crane called “What Are We To Do With Professor X?” Crane and Winters were correspondents and friends for several years; they broke over Winters’ largely hostile review of “The Bridge” in 1930; Crane jumped off an ocean liner two years later. Winters charges Crane’s […]